Eric Chen
Mr. Schaefer
World Lit. I
28 April 2009
Global Warming
Every year, no every month, no even every day, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases; obviously, this is not good news. CO2 in the atmosphere leads to increased temperatures worldwide due to the properties of CO2, a greenhouse gas that traps more of the sun’s heath within our atmosphere. While a few degrees may not sound very serious, the difference can utterly ruin entire ecosystems. What can we do to stop this? Many solutions have been proposed, but we should predominantly use solar, wind as well as hydroelectric power to solve the problems of global warming.
Global warming, which everyone now knows about thanks to the tireless efforts of many activists such as Al Gore, is caused by CO2 as well as other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. This is a normal occurrence; however, with the advent of fossil fuel burning, human society as a whole has rapidly increased the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. This has caused many horrible and occasionally irreversible changes to the environment. One of the most major of these changes is the melting of the polar ice caps, which in turn leads to rising ocean levels. At first, the rising ocean levels were not a serious concern because most of the ice melting was floating in the water. If your remember from science, the ice displaces the same amount of water as its volume. The ice has a volume of 0.9cm/g3; therefore, in reality, the melting ice would almost paradoxically lower the ocean levels. However, now it would seem that this occurrence is no longer the case. Ice that has formed on land has now started melting at dramatic rates. So dramatic, in fact, that, according to the Economist, even the most pessimistic of scientists didn’t even anticipate such a rapid rise in ocean levels. It is predicted that the oceans will rise approximately one meter by the turn of the century. While this may seem like an...